ANIMAL FARM BY GEORGE ORWELL

AND ITS UNVERSALITY

Animal Farm was one of the books which always eluded me. Every time I decided to give it a go I read something else instead. Mainly because of the fact that I knew it was a story of precise allegory adorned with a single-sided political debate. The allegory Orwell chose to employ is so clear-cut that even with minimal knowledge one can decipher who stands for whom or what historical event was conveyed through the acts of the animals of the farm. Now I am not going to bore you with the details you already know. Old Major is Karl-Marx, Mr Jones is the Tsar, Napoleon is Stalin whereas Snowball is a vivid embodiment of both Lenin and Leon Trotsky and so on and so forth. George Orwell himself admitted to these characters in his first preface of the book and later essays when he was defending his book against many of his contemporaries who initially even refused to publish it. T.S Elliot was among these names.

I cannot know however; if Orwell was aware of the fact that in creating something so precise he was still writing about a vicious circle that is applicable to any utopia or ideology because when viewed from a more universal perspective, one can clearly see that the book in fact has got more to do with utopian doom than Stalinism or the Russian Revolution: That one rotten apple placed on top is enough to ruin the entire bushel.  Which is the reason why Orwell, in disguise of a donkey named Benjamin displays his pessimism about ideologies: "Life will go on as it has always gone on—that is, badly."  Right from the horse’s mouth, or better yet the donkey’s mouth. Ideologies and utopias are doomed to fall apart for as long as people follow their leaders blindly. And even when they seem to work, greed mixed with power will turn any utopia into a despicable, uninhabitable yet inheritable dystopia. 

From this perspective Old Major stands for any wise ideologist whose intentions are well, Napoleon is a fantastic portrayal of any politician who exploits an ideology. And Squealer is not Molotov in this case, it is the newspapers and national news we watch on television, through which we are fed lies on a daily basis. Many conformist Boxers did, do and will die and many Mollies will find another place to inhabit. The supreme power of government will always release its dogs on the streets under the name of police force to silence the smart whereas the sheep will always yell words they do not even understand. Animal Farm is universally pessimistic and rightly so when we look at our own contemporary world.

I guess in concluding this post I have to agree with Henry David Thoreau when he says: I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

But first animals need to learn how to read for themselves.

 

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Written by Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, was published back in 2005, originally in English. The author herself is of Ukrainian origin and began her writing career as late as her fifties. Perhaps this is the reason why the book has got the sound humor of an adult and a lighthearted approach towards drama and in some cases ‘melodrama’.

The book is written in first person point of view and our narrator is called Nadia, whose father decides to take a wife, less than half his age, after his eighties. Appalled and shocked, Nadia buries the hatchet with her ‘Big Sis’ against the common enemy which comes in a make-up covered package of one Valentina, whose bosoms make the daughters feel flat-chested. The more Nadia digs, the more she will find out about her family history, her father, her sister and herself.

 
One would expect a lesser book with such a washed up story but that is not the case with Marina Lewycka’s narration. The book subjectively and discreetly discusses human nature and through personal experiences where different people stand on communism, capitalism, famine, war and immigration; and tractors…

What I admired most in this book however was the artless manner of the writer herself. She relates events in sincerity but without dragging them out; never succumbing to melodramatic expressions and bitter notions. She doesn’t impart the story through emotional exploitation of the reader but rather treats it as a simple history of one family which, like other families in the entire world, has got its own secrets, shame, resentments but also love, respect and devotedness. Like any other family, they are unique in their simplicity.

I enjoyed reading it and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in a simple yet engaging story written in a humorous fashion while all the way revealing truths about the human nature…and tractors…

www.coursera.org

Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative

Mission accomplished!

I recently have come across this incredibly entertaining and instructive outlet of self-development: Coursera. It offers a wide-range of Universities from all around the world as well as some classes in multiple languages; But if you would like to give it a try English is a must since the best and the most courses are offered in English.

 

It works pretty easily, you go visit the page, sign up for the site and then choose the class you would like to roll and you are good to go. There is a wide range of courses, some of them requiring a specific previous knowledge, some of them, just for beginners. In any case if you wish to acquire a plain Coursera certificate it is completely free but if you would like to receive a completion certificate from the University of the class itself then you are supposed to pay for it.

Either way it is a great way for self development with or without a certificate. I have rolled for several classes, some of which I follow closely by doing the quizzes and the assignments and some of which I simply put on the watch list because although I do not care about the certificate I would like to follow them still in order to gain knowledge.

In all the courses you take you can either download the class videos in order to watch them on your tv later on or you can follow them on your computer.

I myself have just completed my first course in distinction track. As the sub-heading suggests it was of course about gaming but it beautifully and thoroughly evaluated games' narratives in various forms and how books and poems are remediated. I have to say; I enjoyed every minute of this course and learned so much on a topic which I already knew well. But this course helped me go to the roots of the specific genre of fantasy fiction. We have evaluated and discussed various works including a part of Spencer's Faerie Queene. 

But the class's main focus was on The Lord of the Rings. We have discussed and prepared assignments on how Tolkien's work was remediated into films and games. Since I had a fine grasp on the subject already, as many on the course also did, we were able to appreciate it on another level. 

If you have got time, please spare 15 minutes to watch the video I have created for an assignment. We were supposed to make our way to Weathertop and compare and contrast how the three medias (the book, the film, the online game) handled it in their own ways. We had to primarily focus on only one aspect and I had chosen to compare and contrast  the setting / mise en scène / gamespace. We were instructed not to include any videos from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings so I had to find other ways to illustrate the points I was making concerning the movie. I hope you will enjoy it.

In concluding this post I would like to say thanks to the main instructor of this course along with his TAs who made the class discussion videos so completely enjoyable. 

I will be coming back to coursera , that is, if I ever leave it at all...    

  

The God of Small Things

Should write shorter novels...

  Written by Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things did look like a promising book when I lifted it off the shelf. It was written back in 1997 and so far it is the only novel of the mentioned author. The main theme implies how the small things change your life forever whereas every life changing event which leads to a series of catastrophes is in fact the opposite of small and unimportant. 

The setting is quite strong with detailed descriptions of not just the spaces but of characters as well. So visioning the book and directing your own movie in your head while reading it is quite the easy task. 

What is not an easy task is reading through a story which feels stretched after a while. 

In general I am in great favor of a mystery, which is to be revealed later on or at the end. Especially if it includes a O.Henry style twist. But if the author reveals too much and lets the reader guess it through the mid-book then it is completely ruined. And no amount of repetitive staccato sentences lifted off from "Waiting for Godot" is going to save it. 

Despite the wrong technique employed in the book, the story is interesting and even informative when it comes to reading about a culture which is so wholly unconnected to that of your own. The non-sequential narrative is a must when there is a mystery to be revealed. Going back and forth in the story is always refreshing and it is even something I adore since I've read my first Jose Vasconcelos book.

Looking at the book from every angle I can see its misused potential. Much like the characters within it, the book refuses to transcend and instead stretches itself to its limits, up to a point where you sit back and say: "Just get to the point please.". The third person narration used in the story resembles a chatty 90 year-old who has to talk about her childhood for an hour beforehand in order to explain why the wine she bought yesterday was tasty. 

In concluding this post I have to say that the book was not bad. It could have been a masterpiece had it been shorter and if the writer had not succumbed to some cliche techniques such as repetitions and staccato sentences which really only work for short stories and plays. As it is now however I can only call it mediocre.

Fifty Shades of Grey

More like Fifty Shades of wasting my time…

Quickly lets give a little info on the book: Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance by British author E. L. James. Set largely in Seattle, it is the first installment in a trilogy that traces the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business magnate, Christian Grey. It is notable for its explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM).

My thoughts on the book in a nutshell: Twilight for grown-ups…

The protagonist Anastasia Steele is no different than the famous Bella Swan of Twilight trilogies but instead of keeping friends with vampires and werewolves she lives in a more realistic world and keeps company of a seriously disturbed man Christian Grey, who has to go all the trouble with making women sign a NDA before engaging in sexual intercourse with them.

Wanna go kinky boy? Put those papers down and go kinky!

It is the same washed up, tiresome story about a clumsy, slightly idiotic woman meeting her better, mysteriously-dangerous-to-an-acceptable-degree man. Supposedly she sees herself as nothing special, the narration describes her as nothing special and yet the superior guy sees her from a different angle and goes nuts over her. They make a perfect couple. One is completely devoid of self-reliance whereas the other relies on people to rely on them.

I suppose it appeals to the women out there who see themselves as nothing special and they wait for their Christian NDAnuts and Edward Whitefangs to save them from their mundane lives.

Cant really blame them on the one hand. In every woman there is a little voice that keeps saying: “Oh he will take care of me and worry over me. When I kick him out of the door he will come back from the window. He is my superior, I adore him and for some dumb reason he adores me although I am nothing special.” That voice must be killed…I murdered mine with a fire-poker! Daddy issues? No thanks!

 Funny how I heard that a housewife of 15 years of marriage left her home after reading the book claiming: “There is more to life!”. Have you ever tried BDSM sweetheart? Because it hurts. Books are for reading, lives are for living. Some books are less worth reading though…

And yet people kept mistaking me as they always do when I finish a book way too quickly! “Oh you must have liked it a lot.” Once again: No I did not like it, if I did like it, I would have savored every page, soaking in philosophical debates, putting the book down for long periods of time to think on it and maybe even take notes on the ideas it offers and sometimes even go through revelations. If you see me finish a book in 1day-1week that means I do not value it, if you see me read it for at least a month that means I like it so much that I do not wish to finish it.

I did take notes on this book though. Some of the positions mentioned were definitely interesting to carry into my private life with my husband. And the only revelation it offered was: “Best Seller” means something else to the popular culture than it does to me.

Still I love when I am proven right. I kept saying that it was twilight for grown-ups and incidentally when I was doing a small research to write this post I came across this tiny little bit of information on the internet about how it was written by E.L. James firstly as a fan-base work of twilight. Oh I just knew it!

Apparently Stephanie Meyer refuses to relate any of E.L. James’ book to herself even as inspiration. I suppose it gets her down to think how lousy her (and by that I mean both authors) characters are when subjected to a real world setting. Well on the bright side Twilight Series were at least meant for a much younger audience than Fifty Shades series and this by all means is the only reason why it escapes my wrath. Much like Harry friggin' Potter series whose surname I suspect comes from the fact that he does a lot of pot hence imagines all his adventures...

I am not saying that one should not read love stories or get gooey and romantic. But do you want to read a real love story full of torment, written in the right way with full profiles of complex characters that go beyond their times hence being rendered immortal? Read Wuthering Heights, read Anna Karenina, read Madame Bovary, read Mrs Dalloway…

But don’t read this pop-corn and then claim it to be a great book. If books of the classic literature are the equivalents of FIPRESCI award winning movies then books like Fifty Shades are the equivalents of American Cheerleader comedies with Rob Schneider starring in them. They will show you a nice time but if you try to take them seriously people of intellect will simply laugh at you.